SF subway stalled after contractor lays down wrong track, city says

The opening of Muni’s Central Subway from Caltrain to Chinatown is already a year behind schedule, but it could be pushed into 2020 after the discovery that a contractor installed 3.2 miles of the wrong grade of rail.

In an April 19 letter, the Municipal Transportation Agency told contractor Tutor Perini that it would reject the rails as not meeting the specifications of the contract, and called for them to be removed and replaced with high-strength rails at the contractor’s expense. That cost is unknown.

As first reported in the San Francisco Examiner, an independent auditor discovered the problem. The project calls for the use of high-strength steel rail for the $1.6 billion subway, but Tutor Perini and a subcontractor, Con-Quest Contractors, installed standard-strength rails, the MTA said.